Otium

Otium, a Latin abstract term, has a variety of meanings, including leisure time in which a person can enjoy eating, playing, relaxing, contemplation and academic endeavors. It sometimes, but not always, relates to a time in a person's retirement after previous service to the public or private sector, opposing "active public life". Otium can be a temporary time of leisure, that is sporadic. It can have intellectual, virtuous or immoral implications. It originally had the idea of withdrawing from one's daily business (neg-otium) or affairs to engage in activities that were considered to be artistically valuable or enlightening (i.e., speaking, writing, philosophy). It had particular meaning to businessmen, diplomats, philosophers and poets. In ancient Roman culture otium was a military concept as its first Latin usage. This was in Ennius' Iphigenia. Otio qui nescit uti plus negotii habet quam cum est negotium in negotio; nam cui quod agat institutum est non ullo negotio id agit, id studet, ibi mentem atque animum delectat suum: otioso in otio animus nescit quid velit Hoc idem est ; em neque domi nunc nos nec militiae sumus; imus huc, hinc illuc; cum illuc ventum est, ire illinc lubet. Incerte errat animus, praeterpropter vitam vivitur. He who does not know how to use leisure has more of work than when there is work in work. For to whom a task has been set, he does the work, desires it, and delights his own mind and intellect: in leisure, a mind does not know what it wants. The same is true (of us); we are neither at home nor in the battlefield; we go here and there, and wherever there is a movement, we are there too. The mind wanders unsure, except in that life is lived. According to historian Carl Deroux in his work Studies in Latin literature and Roman history, the word otium appears for the first time in a chorus of Ennius' Iphigenia. Ennius' first use of the term otium around 190 BC showed the restlessness and boredom during a reprieve from war and was termed otium negotiosum (free time to do what one wanted) and otium otiosum (idle wasteless free time).